


and the water is always calling

by Solanaceae



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, my slashy valentine 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5936295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/pseuds/Solanaceae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elemmírë, alone in Valinor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the water is always calling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lunarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/gifts).



> The prompt was: "Írimë/Elemmírë: Heartbroken Elemmírë still finding Lalwen following her everywhere, though her wife had chosen to follow her brother to Middle-earth." And this was super fun to write! I hope you enjoy :)

The moon rose, and Elemmírë woke to silver light spilling across the empty side of her bed. She watched it spread like pooling water, mind still hazy with sleep, and for a moment she thought it was Telperion’s light in the height of its glory, that she would roll over and see her wife slumbering  beside her.

She closed her eyes again instead. The other side of the bed had been empty for some time now.

***

One year.

Valinor  emerged from darkness slowly and hesitantly. Indis sat in the High King’s seat, a position she demurely insisted was merely interim. Those in the streets, who had seen how her gentle hand guided the broken pieces of their land back together, knew the truth.

The Vanyar, relatively uninvolved in the conflict that tore the Eldar apart, had mostly withdrawn to meditate on what had happened, sending forth resources when asked for. Elemmírë, preferring involvement,  had turned her poet’s hands to labor, helping consolidate Tirion and rebuild Alqualondë. Things she could touch, things she could _do_ —that was what she needed right now.

The first dream had come mere months after the darkness fell over Valinor.

She opened her eyes to spinning white, fingers going numb in the whirling snow. Írimë was there, kneeling beside a dark shape slumped over on the ice. A spill of golden hair across the ground was the only identifying feature.

Írimë looked up. Elemmírë drew back, shocked. Her wife’s face was sunken, eyes two black stones, dull and empty. Her skin was colorless, as though someone had drawn the very life from her. Snow caught in her hair, in the folds of her clothes, on her eyelashes.

The view widened as a gust of wind parted the curtains of snow, and Elemmírë could see the rest of the exiles, huddled dark shapes nearly obscured by the snow. They trudged onwards over a landscape of bleak white, heads down. She could almost taste the despair in the freezing wind, whirling and screaming against the gale.

“Írimë,” she whispered, reaching out. Her fingers passed through her wife’s shoulder.

Elemmírë jerked awake in her empty bed, shaking with cold. She drew her blanket around her shoulders, unable to warm herself despite the warm breeze whispering through the open window.

***

They had gone north once in the height of summer, after Írimë complained a few too many times of the heat. Elemmírë borrowed a pair of horses from the stables and they rode for a day, stopping only for a meal in the shade of the pine trees. They made love there, on a bed of crushed needles that made everything smell green and bright, then continued onwards.

Elemmírë had not seen snow since she was a young child, so when the first flurries drifted down from the grey clouds, she lifted her face to the sky and laughed. So entranced was she by the novelty that she did not notice Írimë stealthily bending down behind her to gather a handful of snow.

A burst of cold against the back of her head, and she whirled in shock to see  Írimë covering her mouth to stifle laughter.

“You dare!” she had called in mock outrage, and Írimë had given in, throwing back her head and laughing to the sky. They tussled in the snow, and Írimë had planted a kiss to her cold lips, face flushed and eyes bright.

***

Blood under starlight. Írimë whirled, her teeth bared in a wolfish snarl, twin blades flashing in her hands. Black streaks marred the shining steel like spilled oil. A monster with an animal head and thick, warted hide roared at her, a crude spear clutched in its hand. Elemmírë recoiled in disgust.

Írimë’s blades swept downwards, and the creature’s head thudded to the ground. There was a wild light in her eyes. Savage, like an untamed wolf.

Elemmírë felt a shock of fear and fell back into the dark, reaching for the safety of her own moon-soaked bed.

***

When Írimë left, Elemmírë waited for weeks before going into her study. By then, a layer of fine dust covered everything, coming up in clouds where she stepped. Everything was just as Írimë had left it.

There was a stack of paper in one of the drawers, the bottomost crinkled and yellowing with age. Elemmírë recognized her own handwriting. These were all the poems she had written her wife, from the first shy steps of courtship to one mere days before the darkness fell. They had been sitting in the garden, Irime sleeping in the shade of the plum tree, falling blossoms caught in her golden hair. Elemmírë had watched her, an aching breathlessness driving into her heart at the quiet beauty of her wife.

_Ai, Irime, what happened to make you so eager to leave?_

She could have followed, she knew. Irime had all but begged her, alight with the fervor of rebellious adventure. But Elemmírë had been afraid, had known that what the sons of Finwë proposed to do could not end well.

Did she regret it?

She did not know the answer to that.  

***

Indis asked her to write a poem for the memorial at Alqualondë. Elemmírë stared at the paper for hours, occasionally writing a word or two before scratching them out again. The singing in her veins would not come, the words that had flowed from her pen as though she were only a conduit for something already shining there were just beyond reach, tantalizing and frustrating.

She told Indis that rightfully, a poet from Olwë’s people ought to have this privilege. Indis nodded, questions in her eyes, and Elemmírë left before she could ask them.

The words might never come again the way they had when she had courted Írimë. Then, the light had been golden and their stolen kisses sweeter than the songs of the Vanyar. They had danced in the hands of eternity, secure and oblivious.

She would have given anything to return to that time.

***

Night after night, the dreams came. Some were of blood and darkness, horrible creatures fleeing to the sound of thundering hooves. Some were nearly peaceful—a strange land of green and grey, jagged outcroppings and looming pines under a changing sky. She saw dwellings spring up, encampments swelling. A strange new race, withering and fading like the spring grass.

Every dream left her with the bitter taste of loss in her mouth, everything around her aching and cold.

Írimë—they called her Lalwen now, the laughing one—slept uneasily, too. Elemmírë saw her under distant stars, pacing back and forth in full armor as her people slept. Saw the deep bruises under her eyes, the way she shivered when the wind blew from the north.

 _Sleep,_ she wanted to tell her wife, _come home to the warm and quiet, and sleep until you smile again._ The leagues between them made her heart an echoing cavern of empty.

***

“Mother.”

Lilómië did not look up from her weaving, but only gestured for her daughter to sit down. “Ah, Elemmírë. Come early to pay your annual respects, hm?”

Elemmírë winced. “I have been busy, but I still ought to come see you more often. For that I apologize.”

Now her mother looked up, pale grey eyes narrowing. “What do you want, then?”

It really was remarkable, how perceptive her mother was. Lilómië was ancient even by the standards of the Eldar, though her smooth skin and clear eyes betrayed nothing of her age. She had seen much, from the first stars to the darkening of this land—and Elemmírë had no doubt that Lilómië would someday see the end of Arda as well.

“Could I not have come simply out of respect for my venerable mother?”

“Ai, child, you never could fool me.” Lilómië’s eyes twinkled. She set aside her weaving, and Elemmírë caught a glimpse of threaded silver and red. “You worry much over something, enough that you cannot sleep soundly.” When Elemmírë started with surprise, she laughed. “Nay, I need no mystic powers to see that. You are pale as a wraith.”

Elemmirë clasped her hands together, composing herself. “I wished a working from you.”

“That seems to be everyone’s desire,” Lilómië sighed. She spread her hands out over the bundle of colored thread beside her. “Look, these golden ones, for a noble’s son who wishes to know his marriage prospects. These green for the overseer of the fields, to determine what he ought to plant. If I am to be called for everything, I shall have no moment to myself.”

“Mother, this is important—”

“So are wheat and beans, it seems.” But there was a teasing note in her mother’s voice, and Elemmírë relaxed. “Only promise that once I have done the working, you will take one of my potholders home. All anyone wants is to see the future—hardly anyone appreciates the care I put into my potholders.”

Elemmírë smiled. “Yes, mother.”

Lilómië and her threads had guided the Vanyar for as long as Elemmírë could remember. Every Vanya knew the old rites—how to place the stones, the bones, the cloth—and though the stones had become jewels and the bones filigree gold, Lilómië’s weaving remained the same. They said that she and Míriel had spent years together, learning each other’s craft, that this was the reason Míriel’s tapestries seemed to breathe with life and Lilómië’s cloth gleamed with subtle workings.

Now, her mother reached for the basket that held everything she needed to spin a web of the future. She often cautioned that what she saw was never precise, never certain—Iluvatar would not have made the world so set that it could not be changed by anyone willing to try, as she always said.

“What is it you wish to see?” Lilómië asked, unraveling a skein of green and laying it out in a criss-crossed circle.

“Írimë,” she admitted. _Who else would it be?_ “I fear the darkness she faces is too much.”

“The darkness is not always an evil, child.” Lilómië’s skillful fingers threaded blue through holes drilled in a simple, worn bone. “They named me _full of darkness_ for the way I could see so far, after all, no matter the shadow in the way. As though I were one and the same with the dark. It is the Enemy who made the darkness a terrible thing.”

“Yes, mother.”

Lilómië glanced sharply at her. “You do not believe as easily as many do, Elemmírë , but that does not make our history any less so.”

She bowed her head, chastened. “I believe that you have knowledge that I do not, mother.”

“Hm.” Her mother nodded, seeming to decide that was good enough. “Quiet, now.”

Her hands spread out over the threads, nudging one of the bones slightly. The smooth white pieces were scattered seemingly at random, like stars in the sky. Lilómië’s eyes closed.

Elemmírë had watched her mother do many workings, but even her poet’s tongue could not find the words to describe the subtle shift that came over her mother in the breath before the working began. There was no visible change - at least, nothing obvious. The closest she had ever come to finding something that gave her the same feeling had been long ago, when she had traveled north with some Noldor explorers. There, they had found a river of ice, a _glacier_ , that creaked under its own weight and moved forward imperceptibly yet inexorably. Lilómië now had that feeling about her, of intrinsic movement even as she seemed to sit perfectly still.

Workings could take long minutes, sometimes even close to half an hour. Elemmírë folded her hands and sat back in her seat to wait.

***

“She is safe.”

Lilómië looked tired, her hands curled around the cup of tea Elemmírë  had brewed for her. She had emerged from the working after nearly an hour, fingers twitching closed around the gathered threads before her. She had been seeking to see the other side of the world, after all, and the journey had not been easy.

“Safe?” Elemmírë repeated.

“As safe as one can be there. She carries a wound within her, something from the journey there. But I suspect you knew that already.”

“What do you mean?”

“Merely this.” Lilómië nodded to the bundle of threads. “I seek a way into the warp of the world, to travel into what will be and what is. I do not think I could have found your love if there had not been a thread that bound her here still.”

“You mean...?”

“Her love for you persists over the sea, over the years.” Lilómië sighed, raising her cup to her lips thoughtfully. “As does yours for her. It is a powerful bond, and one that I think does not sever easily.”

“I have dreamt of her,” Elemmírë admitted. “I wondered if those dreams were truly real.”

“They are.”

“Then how might I use that to speak to her?”

Lilómië regarded her, brows drawing together. “I do not know, child. Perhaps you cannot. The fact that you can see her might be all the grace you are given by your love.”

***

_I will not believe it._

The dreams fell into familiar patterns, now. Life on the other side of the sea had settled, a rhythm of seasons still shadowed by a threat to the north, and yet - nearly peace.

Elemmírë tried, night after night. She wrote notes that she kept nearby, glancing at from time to time in the hopes that, if Írimë could see the way she could, they could communicate. Yet there was never any hint that the connection went both ways, that Irime dreamt of her the way Elemmírë  did. The terms of their exile, perhaps.

_I will reach her._

***

Fire roared down from the north, and Írimë stood and fought it. Elemmírë watched her stand in the path of unspeakable horror, and felt overwhelmingly helpless and terrified.

 _Please be safe_ , she wanted to beg. _Please._ But Írimë had never taken the cautious path.

The dragon rose against a smoke-scarred sky, outline in sullen fire. Irime drew her sword and screamed her challenge, burning reckless and unafraid. They danced through the fires, the slender figure with her shining sword and the great beast, hulking and black.  

When Írimë fell, Elemmírë  cried out. The sound was whipped away by the firestorm, by the distance between them. It echoed in her own ears, haunted and heartbroken.

***

Elemmírë stayed by her wife’s side, standing over the broken body as the fires raged around them. She was not really there, so she felt nothing as the flames licked at her ghostly arms, consumed the body at her feet until it crumbled into ash.

She did not realize what she had been waiting for until she saw the woman stepping through the curtain of smoke, staring at her bare arms as though marveling at their wholeness.

“Írimë,” she called, and her wife looked up, eyes widening.

“Elemmírë?” She stepped forward, seeming uncertain. Her hand brushed Elemmírë’s cheek, a whisper of sensation. Her face broke into a smile. “I thought you were with me sometimes, Elemmírë. I could feel you. Was that true?”

“It was.”

Hardly daring to hope, Elemmírë reached out and clasped Írimë’s hand. It was cool and not entirely there, but she could feel Írimë’s fingers tighten around hers. It had been so _long_.

“Come home with me,” she blurted out. “Please?”

Írimë smiled, grey eyes alight with adventure. “Lead the way, my love.”


End file.
